Thesis Title
Infrastructural Power in China’s Corporate Social Credit System: The State-Corporate Nexus in Credit Data, Reporting and Financing Platforms

Research Description
This thesis investigates the state-corporate and infrastructural-power dynamics in China’s Corporate Social Credit System—a credit data-driven, business regulatory system established by the Chinese government in 2014. Merging methodologies from political economy, infrastructure studies and platform studies, the thesis contends that the Chinese state’s recent involvement in credit reporting, financing, and data trading platforms embodies an expansion of its infrastructural power beyond the material-technical archetypes of roads, bridges and dams. While these state-led platforms have constrained the market power of private financial platform giants in the area of personal credit (together with wider reform of fintech and data economies), the state-corporate nexus has shown more co-operation in the digital marketisation and global expansion of China’s corporate credit infrastructures—no doubt to help re-invigorate a stagnating, post-pandemic credit economy.

Supervisors
Prof Haiqing Yu, RMIT University
Dist Prof Julian Thomas, RMIT University